


Cumbia is right!

by nojoking



Category: Sharing Knife - Lois McMaster Bujold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2018-11-17 08:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11271723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nojoking/pseuds/nojoking
Summary: When you know you’re right and there is no alternative.  When there’s no alternative to you being right. The First Lesson at Tent Redwing.





	Cumbia is right!

Cumbia sat waiting for her daddy and her uncle to come home. She’d been waiting a lot of days, in fact she couldn’t count how many but she knew it was a lot. Numbers are tricky when you’re only five.  


Sitting there on a log near the family tent was boring. But she was willing to wait just as long as it took for her daddy, and Uncle Rav, to get home. She was missing them so much. Her mummy, Santhe, and all her aunts and the rest of the tent, and the other children in the camp, were important but her daddy was special. He was the number two to the camp’s senior Patrol Captain and always came home with exciting stories.  


Last time, he’d come back with stories about how they had dealt with some interfering farmers who had, in his words, tried some sneaky farmer tricks to get out of paying ‘what they owed for clearing out a malice’.  


Her daddy was the best in the world. Cumbia loved her daddy. But she didn’t like how often he went away. But she sort of understood when Daddy said it made the coming back extra special.  


She wasn’t old enough for her groundsense to be effective so the first she knew was footsteps coming through the mud puddle which had built up in the path to the tent. She stood, expectant and excited.  


It wasn’t her daddy or her uncle or anybody she cared about. She sat back on the log and kept waiting and just a little bit sad. Waiting was dull. But everyone else was busy and there were no other children near her age to play with.  


It wasn’t long after that she heard her mummy and all the aunts screeching and wailing. She ran to see what was happening. It wasn’t going to be good.  


“Your Daddy’s dead, darling,” was the first thing she heard as her mummy picked her up and squeezed her tight.  


There may have been more words but she heard none of them. Her world was shattered, broken. Her daddy was dead.  


As time went by, she heard more about it and she made her mind up about a whole lot of things.  


Being on patrol was bad.  
Dealing with farmers, spit, was bad.  
Wasting time looking for food was bad.  
Disobeying the Tent-matriarch was bad.  
The Tent is more important than Patrol.  
Being anything other than a maker was ‘failing in one’s duty to the camp’.  


These ‘facts’ were soon driven deep into her soft and malleable mind. Her mummy and her aunts would always say something like this whenever Daddy or Uncle Rav were mentioned. Because these were among the reasons they were dead. Dead – her mind shrieked whenever those words were used.  


And she didn’t change her mind as she grew older.  


But she learnt new lessons. When her teenage brother was having a growth spurt and seemed to need feeding every hour of every day except when he was asleep – which he did too much of – she told her mother that she thought Lan had taken food from the tent store. She watched as Santhe punished him and beat him until he wept and promised never to do it again.  


She stored her mother’s bitter threats for later. “You boys just get greedy. There’s only so much that a boy needs. Each year as they gets older so they need only just a little more. That’s the way that you grow into a true, fit and solid man. No more stealing. It’s wrong. It’s taking from those who have as much need as you just because you’ve got a worm inside you. It’s greed and it’s wrong.”  


She never saw her mother as hard or strict. She always explained everything she did if asked. And every time, her explanation made a stern sort of sense to the young girl. And gradually she learnt the power of certainty, of determination, of control and of how to use that power to manipulate weaker people. And telling others what to do was right - because Cumbia’s way was the right way. She knew it so why did anybody ever question her?  


\---------------------  


Time passed and Cumbia married and had two children. The elder was Dar, and he was a good boy. He listened to his mum and did what he was told. In the years after, she wanted a daughter, desperately, needfully, ever-hopingly, ever-failing. Never a daughter to keep the tent line strong and solid and ongoing.  


Dag came later. He was much harder to keep in line. Every effort that Cumbia put into keeping him tied to home immediately backfired or was gradually eaten away. She waited for his groundsense to arrive so that she would know in which further ways she must bend him to her aims. She told herself that it was for his good that she did these things.  


She told others the same. “I’m only doing this for his own good. I won’t have him wasting his time on patrols when he could be so much more useful here in camp doing the support work that every patroller needs. Of course, I know patrolling is important. Didn’t I sacrifice my husband and my brother to the malices doing just that?”  


She never saw the nudges that other people gave each other. She never noticed the comments that other people made. Why should she? She knew that she was right. And when you are right there can be no argument.  


But Dag kept on and on and, oh gods, on with his desire to be a patroller. She responded with harder and harsher guidance as to what she was willing to permit. She knew the traditions of camp better than anyone. What she did couldn’t be wrong because she knew that everything she did was right.  


If anyone dared to question a new interpretation of some tradition, Cumbia would merely repeat ‘Does anyone dare say that they know the camp traditions better than I do? …… and no one would reply.  


Cumbia loathed anyone who disagreed with her. Somehow they would find themselves on the back foot, suffering disapproval from all the right-thinking people in the camp [that is to say, those who accepted Cumbia’s approach]. There were times when others expressed a different view or an alternative. Cumbia knew not to listen. Many times, she knew that actually these people were undermining her certainty, attacking her principles and definitely in the wrong. How could life be otherwise? Because Cumbia knew she was right. Always.  


As the years passed, Cumbia grew ever more disapproving of her wandering Dag. She hated his determination to avoid what she knew was his duty, what she so often told him was his duty She hated his repeated departures on patrol and she reminded him every time that ‘being a patroller killed your grandfather.’ ‘Oh, and don’t have anything to do with those vile farmers. Only Lake people matter.”  
She knew that the more often she said these things, the more firmly they would be driven into his brain. She knew this. And nobody disagreed with her. There was no alternative.  


Then came Wolf Ridge. Cumbia didn’t quite know how to deal with Dag for a while. She exulted that he was the hero. She was sad that his so-called wife from neighbouring Luthlia had died, but at least it had made Dag come home to his Tent. That had to be a good thing, under his mother’s wing where she could remind him of his proper duty. Duty to Tent; duty to Camp.  


She never hated Dag – that’s what she told herself and her cronies. How could she hate her son? She was a mother, mothers loved their sons, therefore she loved her son; a simple, obvious and unarguable sequence. But she hated his determination. She hated his willingness to argue, to do other than what she wanted, expected, desired or needed him to do. But she loved Dag. She knew her duty. All she ever wanted was for Dag to do his duty and she knew what that was and she told him as often as possible to do it. But he never did. Not to her satisfaction. She told herself that she never hated him, just his behaviour and actions when they went against what she knew to be right.  


For years, he had drifted coldly, unemotionally, living-dead through the camp. Taciturn, aloof, apart from when there was mention of going on patrol. Then he was mostly silent but selectively informative.  


Cumbia didn’t like it when Dag arrived home because he reminded her of how much her aims had been foiled by his stubbornness and, in addition, her carefully structured tent and camp routines were disturbed. When he left, she didn’t like it either as he was off on the ever-hated patrolling, defying her for year after year.  


And now – could he have done anything that would have disturbed her more. Yes, he seemed to be alive and interested BUT he had brought one of those revolting farmer-types into the camp and was pretending that she was his WIFE. So, so wrong. And she was going to do something about it. How could a child-farmer-slut be in any way acceptable? What was Dag thinking of to challenge his mother, his tent, his camp, the Lake?  


She knew who would be with her. Dar. Dar would do anything to do down his brother. She never quite knew what had happened when they were both young to cause such immense split in what would normally, in Lakewalker families, be a close relationship between two brothers.  


All she knew, all she was confident about, certain about, very determined about was that Dag would be made to pay for his revolting behaviour. Cumbia knew how many, especially on the patroller side, thought Dag was marvellous. Cumbia knew better. Hadn’t she given birth to him? Made him the man he was today? And she still knew best how he should be doing his duty to the camp.  


While he was sent off to Greenspring, she knew that there was an opportunity to hurt Fawn and hopefully persuade her that she should leave. She ordered the girls at the store to come and remove the tent where Fawn was living. To her amazement, when Cumbia looked around their site later, the small tent was still there. She knew those store girls were quite feeble but to be outwitted by a mere farmer girl was very irritating.  


Cumbia simmered gently, well, as gently as she ever did. She simmered without letting any of her rage show. She would bide her time. Her rage could fuel her determination and her certainty of being right.  


That was the other power of her rage. It proved to her that her love was right and true. How could it be otherwise?  


Dag was brought back from Greenspring. Ill, hurting, damaged – just like he had been brought, well actually brought himself, back from Luthlia and the first ruin of his life. As if it could be possible for his life to be ruined provided the ruination separated him from his farmer-slut. Now there was a life that Cumbia wouldn’t even care about ruining. Especially if it put Dag back under her control.  
Amazing stories were being told about what had happened, how different it was from anything that had ever happened before. Locked-in patrollers, healers pulled into that lock, Dag captaining an attack that destroyed a malice with no significant casualties, and then getting locked himself and suddenly being released. Cumbia knew the mention of Fawn was a lie. There was no way a farmer could have contributed. They were little more than vermin, dirt in her shoe, less than dirt.  


She talked with Dar about how they could release Dag from this appalling mess.  


She liked the ideas that Dar had. To insist that the so-called marriage-bond was fake, manipulated, wrong and impossible. Then the farmer-slut could be thrown out of the camp. That Dag had broken the rules of camp life, of how Lakewalkers lived their lives. Dag was in the wrong and should be punished. His duty was to the camp, to Cumbia and what she demanded. Then his later suggestion, that his camp-credit be locked in to prevent him leaving. She knew the worth of possessions, her son could be no different. He wouldn’t walk away from all that. Although, her cold logic reminded her, he had for some ghastly reason sent gifts of considerable worth to the family of his farmer-slut.  


Dar mentioned that Hoharie had asked for special consideration because Dag was ill after Greenspring; that the healer had mentioned a need to investigate what Dag had done, that it looked almost like some special sort of making. Dar said he had sorted Hoharie and she wouldn’t be making any comment that could help Dag or hinder the resolution of his dire situation and the need to correct things because of what Dag had done.  


Cumbia ignored the word that he had actually used of ‘retaliation’. How could the love she had as a mother be involved in any such action?  


\------------------------ 

Cumbia watched as Dag and the slut arrived at the meeting. She didn’t see her son suffering from his wounds or from the attack of the malice at Greenspring – she saw her once-strong son hurt and damaged by this impossible, unrealistic, vile relationship with that slut.  


Dag would do the right thing. He would do it because his mother was right. How could he do otherwise. She was going to win.


End file.
